Research Publication and Presentation

Scientists faced a big challenge after Tohoku Earthquake in March 2011. This is one of the most complex natural disasters in the recorded history, considering the scale and the complexity of the disaster. To fully understand what happened and is happening in this disaster, we need to learn scientific knowledge from almost all domains; not only from earth science for earthquake and tsunami, but also other domains such as nuclear engineering, agriculture, hydrology, medical care, social sciences, politics and economy. The situation is simply overwhelming, but we need to start from a small step; namely to start from a domain in which our expertise can be used for disaster recovery and mitigation. In my case, as a computer scientist, it was data integration and visualization. Hence this presentation reports how I worked on data integration and visualization for multi-disciplinary disaster-related data, how and when those data became available on the Web, and how people reacted to the data. Data integration and visualization was performed mainly in four domains; namely weather, radiation, energy and media, with textual explanations through Twitter and blogs, and they are integrated to obtain a better picture of the situation. During this period, Japanese government, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), and some academic societies have failed to convey important data to the general public, and this also raised an important question of how data should be shared among people. Does a sensitive data cause a panic or lead to better decision making? This kind of data policy and public outreach is also focused as a question without definitive answers at this moment. The disaster is still ongoing, but we need to check our response to the disaster in retrospect, and take necessary actions for better recovery from this disaster and better preparation for future disasters.